The entropy of Lyapunov-optimizing measures of some matrix cocycles

Abstract: We consider one-step cocycles of $2 \times 2$ matrices, and we are interested in their Lyapunov-optimizing measures, i.e., invariant probability measures that maximize or minimize a Lyapunov exponent. If the cocycle is dominated, that is, the two Lyapunov exponents are uniformly separated along all orbits, then Lyapunov-optimizing measures always exist, and are characterized by their support. Under an additional hypothesis of nonoverlapping between the cones that characterize domination, we prove that the Lyapunov-optimizing measures have zero entropy. This conclusion certainly fails without the domination assumption, even for typical one-step $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$-cocycles; indeed we show that in the latter case there are measures of positive entropy with zero Lyapunov exponent.